Microsoft to announce Xbox Game Room and 2010 Natal launch tonight

Microsoft’s Channel 9 community site has accidentally posted a video interview with Robbie Bach, President of the Entertainment & Devices Division, before the company’s annual CES press conference set for 6:30pm PST tonight.

Apparently, the pulled video (which can be found here, 11 minutes in -thanks Whizzo, and here, thanks Dutch) discussed the Xbox Game Room and confirms that Natal will launch this year.

“Go to the 11:53 mark in the video to hear them start discussing Game Room. They aren’t totally concrete on the details, but they talk about how this is supposed to bring back that retro fun to gaming.

“In the video they confirm Natal is on for this year.”

The Natal thing should come as no surprise really, considering everyone and their dog has slipped up and said it would be released this year.

As far as the gaming room is concerned, according to the video and the transcription from Joystiq:

Well, Game Room in some ways is sort of a retro approach. And it’s interesting, there’s a generation of people — sort of my advanced, mature age [laughs] — who grew up with a set of games like Centipede. They look almost like casual, fun games today — at the time they were high-end, edgy games — and so Game Room is the idea of bringing that back to the market. And bringing that to a very broad audience. And I think what we’re gonna find is that when people can get 30 or more of these games, they’re gonna love it for the experience. And it’s not just you and I who are gonna love it, even the people who would call themselves “hardcore gamers” are gonna say “Oh wow this is fun!” In a retro way. It’s sort of like my daughter going to watch Journey. I’m like, this is a band that was playing when I was growing up. And she thinks it’s a cool band and I like the music. And I think you’re gonna have the same phenomenon with Game Room. We’re gonna enjoy the games and they’re gonna think it’s cool. I think that’s very powerful.

Microsoft’s press conference will be liveblogged by Gamespot: view through here. You can also watch it through the official MS News Center (thanks, Dutch).